Charité - Berlin doctors defeat HIV
Sometimes it can be chances which might lead to groundbreaking discoveries, as some of Charité’s Nobel Prize winners proved in the past.
Medics at Berlin’s biggest hospital, the Charité, managed to heal a man entirely, who was infected with HIV.
The HIV-positive man was laid up with leukemia and betook himself into medical treatment by the team of Professor Eckhard Thiel, director of the medical clinic with the emphasis hematology and oncology. The stem cells of the patient showed a special HLA-constellation which is quite common in wide sections of the population. One out of one thousand white Americans and Europeans use to have this HLA-constellation. The pool of donors therefore was quite big. The medics therefore chose a specific donor having the Mutation Delta 32 on the Receptor CCR5. This gene mutation can be found on one to three percent of the European population. Few years ago scientists discovered that persons who had been passed on by this mutation by both of their parents are reliably safe against a transfer of the HI-Virus.
Indeed, they found one of the 60 bone marrow donors to be worth considering, who had this mutation. “We chose this donor, hoping that after the transplantation of his stem cells, even the HIV-infection of the patient could disappear”, said Dr. Gero Hütter, one of Professor Thiel’s scientific staff members. The HI-Virus ties to the receptor CCR5 to be able to penetrate the cells of an infected person. The mutation Delta 32 ensures that there is no receptor on the cell’s surface and which results in the HI-Virus’s inability to penetrate the cell.
Ten years ago the HI-Virus was discovered on an American who is a Berlin resident. At the point, when he started the treatment at Berlin’s Charité 10 years ago, AIDS hasn’t broken out on the man who is 42 years old today. The leukemia disease was no direct result of his HIV-infection. After the bone marrow transplantation, the treatment with medicine was interrupted cause the doctors feared that it might lead to a repulsion of the donored bone marrow. However the patient remained under constant observation, in case of a repeated outbreak of the virus, to start the immediate treatment again. Normally the deduction of the medicine leads to the outbreak of AIDS in a few weeks time. Till this day, more than 20 months after the successful transplantationk, no HIV is detectable within the patients body.
“This is quite an interesting case for the research”, as Professor Rudolf Tauber, dean of research at Charité, declares. “The one who now spreads the hope for cure under millions of infected with the HIV-virus, acts nonserious.” “This particular case nevertheless underlines the key role the gene CCR5 has regarding the transfer and the expansion of the disease”, says Professor Thiel. Medicine, by means of CCR5 are already permitted and will be developed further.
Even though the medics warned against too much euphoria during today’s press conference, and pointed out that the bone marrow transplantation is very risky and expensive, this discovery is nevertheless an important step, which might lead to an overall eradication of mankind’s biggest current disease.
